Wrigley Building a beloved rip-off

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Updated: March 7, 2012 9:50AM

First, a caveat: I love the Wrigley Building. It’s my favorite building in Chicago. For its clock tower. For its pale, porcelain beauty. For its Buck-Rogers-in-Venice sky bridge between its two towers.

I could fill the column with cool Wrigley Building trivia — it has two addresses, 400 and 410 N. Michigan, and a cornerstone filled with gum from 1920. It just sold for less than it cost to build 90 years ago (lots of expensive repair work to do, apparently).

I’m delighted that the Wrigley Building just got landmark status. About time. Now nobody can turn it into another welcome-to-our-planet monstrosity like Soldier Field.

However . . .

That doesn’t mean those who pushed to make the building a landmark can celebrate by trotting out any fantasy they like.

Such as:

“The Wrigley Building is one of Chicago’s premier downtown buildings and internationally known as one of the greatest designs of legendary Chicago architecture,” Lisa DiChiera, a director at Landmark Illinois, was quoted as saying in the Tribune.

Pretty to think so. But nowhere near the hard world of fact. The Wrigley Building has long been viewed not as an architectural triumph but as a nostalgic hodgepodge.

Let us tiptoe into the past.

A “rather commonplace ornament derived from Renaissance designs,” one architecture critic sniffed in 1965, concluding the building has “achieved fame through traits other than architectural merit.”

Another critic called it “a building that refused to go to school — in this case, the Chicago school of architecture.”

You can find entire books with titles like Masterpieces of Chicago Architecture that never mention the Wrigley Building, while those struggling to be kind praise its location, its popularity, or how well lit it is at night.

When I want the final word on a Chicago building, I turn to my old pal Lee Bey.

“When Louis Sullivan said in 1893 that the architecture of the World’s Fair would set us back 50 years, it was that kind of building he was talking about,” Bey said. “It’s not looking forward at all, but all the things you’d think are the antithesis of Chicago architecture.”

Its clock tower is a direct copy of the Giralda Tower of the Seville Cathedral in Spain. The rest is a Moorish/French farrago.

“Yes, it is a mishmash; yes, it does copy,” Bey said, noting it is still “a far better building” than the one across the street, the Tribune Tower, “a Gothic building extended to skyscraper proportions. . . . You notice the Tribune Tower, but the Wrigley Building calls to you.” Amen.

Speaking of calling, I rang up DiChiera to give her a chance to reconsider her comments. She laughed and claimed she has never heard anyone ever question the building. She must not have read the Commission on Chicago Landmarks report too closely, because it also notes criticism. (Perhaps nobody read the report too closely, since it contains a howling blunder: “The Wrigley Building was the iconic headquarters of the Wrigley Company for over 100 years,” quite a claim for a building built in the 1920s).

She said the Tribune misquoted her by truncating her comments in a letter where she cites the building as “one of the greatest designs of legendary Chicago architecture firm Graham, Anderson, Probst and White.”

Those last six words matter a lot. They’re the difference between saying the Twinkie is “one of the pinnacles of American baking” and “one of the pinnacles of American baking company Hostess Brands.”

So let’s release her from the hook, fire a single “harrumph” at the occupants of the Gothic horror show on MichiganAvenue, and remember an eternal truth that applies to buildings and books and religions and almost everything: Never confuse what you love with what is good, because sometimes they coincide and sometimes they don’t.

Nelson Algren wrote that loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose. He did not say it was like loving a woman with the most beautiful nose in the world.

The Wrigley Building is the same deal.

“Behind the terra cotta and the bright lights, you have a building that is pure Chicago,” said Bey. “The way the thing is sited along the river... It’s perfect.”